Ghost emails

[gene heskett]

On Thursday, 19 May 2022 10:41:05 EDT Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 19. Mai 2022 16:12:23 CEST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Thursday, 19 May 2022 14:54:50 BST rhkramer at gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Thursday, May 19, 2022 08:58:46 AM gene heskett wrote:
> > > > I do, I read nearly all mail from local folders on my own
> > > > machine, put
> > > > in
> > > > those local folders by kmails filters, although some do live in
> > > > the
> > > > inbox. Probably 50 unclassifiable messages there, no problem with
> > > > them.> > 
> > > Coming in from left field, but if you read most (all??) emails from
> > > local folders, have you ever (or ever considered) getting them
> > > with pop3 instead of imap?
> > 
> > My ISP doesn't offer IMAP so I have to use POP3. The problem there is
> > that KMail is notoriously bad at handling POP mail - to the extent
> > that it was actually worthwhile for me to set up a little mail
> > server (on another machine, but it could have been on the same one).
> > That used fetchmail to collect mail from the ISP and postfix to
> > transfer it to dovecot, which runs as a local IMAP server to my
> > workstation.
> > 
> > In short, do everything you can think of to avoid POP3 in KMail.
> > 
> > Oh, and don't hold your breath waiting for better POP handling in
> > KMail, because the last I heard, none of its developers had a POP
> > account to test it with. Yes, really!
> 
> I don't think that's what we have said. I think what we have said is
> that all of us use IMAP for all of our email and most of us filter on
> the server. Therefore, we do not experience problems with the daily
> use of POP or local filtering. And testing with a test POP account
> every once in a while just isn't that helpful.
> 
> > When I ran software projects, a comprehensive test environment was
> > essential.
> 
> Yes, that and a dedicated QA team consisting of qualified test
> engineers. That's what we had at the company I used to work for.
> 
> > But then, we weren't all volunteers working in our spare time.
> 
> Exactly. And you cannot blame those volunteers for using the vastly
> more advanced IMAP. POP really should have died last century. The
> "keep mail on server" feature for POP has caused us so many headaches
> in the past because of misbehaving servers. It was gruesome.

> > No offence meant to anyone.
 
> No offence taken.
 
> Regards,
> Ingo

Thanks for that Ingo. Most services that do imap, like mail2world, 
disable pop's ability to get and delete the messages. Fetchmail has grown 
imap ability's and within limits, keeps your inbox at the server empty, 
but they don't allow a pop3 account that privilege because the same 
customer my use both protocols and squawks when his mail vanishes to an 
imap access.

You've made the remark about herding cats, but you need to preach a bit 
stronger about fixing bugs like this that annoy the users. I'd switch 
back to t-bird, but I left it the last time because it had no way to add 
new folders when you subbed to a new subject. kmail 1.9 as tde has fixed 
the majority of the bugs, would be ideal, I had it setup to be fed in the 
background to fetch using imap, to procmail as the mTA, which filtered 
the incoming thru clamav and spamassassin, then dumped the survivors into 
/var/mail/name, and told kmail to go get and filter the local mailfile, 
which it could do in a small fraction of a second.

I can make that feed into /var/mail active in 30 seconds but there's 
three problems with the new kmail.

1. It can't fetch the mailfile from /var/mail/me. No complaints to use 
for troubleshooting, it just silently does not work. How about a failure 
message as to why it doesn't work? That doesn't seem like an unreasonable 
request.

2. It doesn't seem to have a dcop port, so my script can't tell it to go 
get that mail from /var/mail. Taking away features in heavy use by the 
user, is at best, poor form. My script because of that brought the 
lifetime of a non-zero length /var/mail/name down to milliseconds.

3. I've spent quite a few hours trying to import 20 years worth of old 
mails sitting in kmail-1.9's /home/me/Mail directory. Its still there I 
just checked, but how do I actually make that part of the current setup?

My theory is that it goes thru the motions, it does look like it is from 
what it logs, but because it doesn't exist at the server, its all deleted 
on the next imap scan. Thats wrong and a huge BUG.

These 3 are IMNSHO all bugs that should be fixed, or better yet, made 
configurable.

Keep on herding the cats, take care and stay well Ingo.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis